Japanese: Vocabulary and Dictionaries

Japanese Scrabble Words – list of over 150 Japanese words that are “legal” when playing Scrabble in English.

Japanese Origami Phrases

Can you name the English words derived from Japanese? – A timed game in which one is required to write the appropriate words of Japanese origin.

語源由来辞典 – Words in Japanese borrowed from other languages.

LanguageGuide.org — offers free sound integrated resources for learning useful vocabulary

Nihongo Zoku-go — electronic dictionary to look up colloquial expressions in Japanese.

Fun with Words in Japanese – sample activities from a CD-Rom “Kotoba! Fun with Words in Japanese” written and illustrated by Ms. Sachiko Omoto Renovich who teaches at Burnaby Mountain Secondary in B.C.

Vocabulary - A series of Web pages on Japanese vocabulary by Takasugi Shinji:

MIT Japanese Program: Photographic Vocabulary Aid - This site presents photos from Japan, and vocabulary items associated with them. It shows you how words are written and pronounced (sound files). Vocabulary lists under the following headings: train station; street; residence; scenery; and kimono.

Anime, Manga no nihongo (Japanese in Anime & Manga) is a e-learning site that offers a fun way to learn kanji, vocabulary and expressions in context.

Learning Supplements – this Web site from the Association for Japanese Language Teaching is based on the textbook Japanese for Busy People. It offers interactive resources with audio files for beginning Japanese language learners under the following headings: numbers; telephone, calendars, time, money, verbs, adjectives and family.

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Japanese-English Dictionary Server - by Prof. Breen at Monash University.

English-Japanese Picture Dictionary – A primary level dictionary in romaji.

英辞郎 on the Web – English –Japanese and Japanese English dictionary with an extensive number of entries.

Goo-dictionary — online dictionaries which consist of English–Japanese, Japanese-English, IT and MBA terminologies, with sound files

Japanese Kanji Dictionary – This dictionary for learning the Kanji of Japanese used in daily life includes audio files.

POPjisyo.com – Dictionary and translation tool that allows you to look up any word by moving the mouse over it. You can also save words to a study list by double clicking on them. The site also offers a matching game to practice kanji.

Denshi Jisho - Online Japanese dictionary – contains three dictionaries: find words, kanji and example sentences by searching in many ways. The dictionaries are also interlinked so that you can check what the kanji in a word mean individually or what context a word can be used in. You can also look up kanji by the parts it contain.